Many forms of pseudoscience are linked to political ideology. The last presidential administration perfectly demonstrated how some sets of pseudoscientific ideas can tag along with other political beliefs. While President Barack Obama has done a good job of restoring science to most of the White House, the new organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn shows that faulty views of reality are not limited to any political party. It is no surprise that Brown does not have hordes of creationists or climate change deniers. They are here; but by far, the most prevalent pseudoscientific beliefs on campus are about things like organic farming.
The naturalistic fallacy underlies most of the organic ideology. This is the belief that natural is better. According to this fallacy, fertilizer that comes out of a cow is better than fertilizer that comes out of a factory because the former one is natural. But being natural obviously does not mean that something must be good. Which is better: all-natural hemlock or a synthetic poison? Rather than blanket statements, each claim must be individually justified.
Some of the many claims that supporters of organic food make are that synthetic pesticides and fertilizers are dangerous to human health, organic farming is better for the environment and supporting organic farms helps smaller farmers instead of large corporations.
Natural fertilizers like manure actually have serious problems. Feces, you may recall, are not very sterile. They can contain pathogens like E. coli and salmonella. Remember the big recall on organic spinach a few years ago? That's what happens when you grow your food in a toilet and fail to properly sanitize it. These pathogens are abundant and get on conventionally grown produce too, but there are more ways to protect consumers using conventional methods. The rules for organic food in the United States prohibit irradiating food to kill off the dangerous bacteria. Irradiation uses ionizing radiation to kill off living things on your food — it does not turn it radioactive! Synthetic fertilizers are instead made directly from the desired nutrients without the added pathogens.
Next on the list is the claim that pesticides are not on your conventionally grown produce. They are. They're also inside your food. Long before humans, plants evolved pesticides and fungicides to kill off their would-be attackers. This accounts for most of the pesticides you consume. There are also synthetic pesticides found on both conventional and organic produce but the levels are low and safe.
Contrary to what pushers of organic food would like you to believe, pesticides can also be used on organic food. The only catch is that farms are required to use natural pesticides, rather than the synthetic ones designed to cheaply kill the desired bugs while doing the least collateral damage. I fail to see why a natural poison is better for you than a synthetic one. Luckily, we regulate the use of both to ensure their safe use.
Then there is the claim that organic food is better for the environment. Again, the facts contradict the organic hype. Conventional agriculture has its problems but intensively farming the least amount of land that we can leaves room for natural habitats. The agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug saved more lives than anyone else in history by breeding plants that produced more food per year than anyone had before. Each farm could then feed more people. He summed up the effect of universal organic farming as follows: "Even if you could use all the organic material that you have — the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues — and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests." Organic farming not only puts rainforests and other ecosystems at risk due to the need for more arable land, but it also means less food for an already starving world. Calls for organic food come from countries of plenty, not countries that are still struggling to feed their people.
Finally, there is the claim that buying organic is a blow to corporations. Wrong again. Corporations like Dole and Chiquita might be evil, but they are not stupid. Organic foods sell for much more than conventionally grown counterparts. When organic food became vogue, the large corporations were right there to sell overpriced products to the new market. Sorry, but unless you're going out of your way to research each product's origin, odds are you are still supporting Big Agra.
To quote the Food Standards Agency, the British agency in charge of food safety: "Consumers may also choose to buy organic food because they believe that it is safer and more nutritious than other food. However, the balance of current scientific evidence does not support this view."
David Sheffield '11 is a math-physics concentrator, who thinks everything is more fun when it's irradiated. He can be contacted at
